Novels by StaryUll

A gray haze blanketed the sea like a rotting shroud. The water was black, viscous, and smelled of iron. The lifeboat drifted without direction, creaking each time a small wave struck its cracked hull. Elios sat along the side, his back pressed against damp wood. His breathing was heavy. His combat jacket was torn in several places, the blood dried into black crust. His eyes were sunken, but still alert. Vera lay at the bottom of the boat, wrapped in an emergency blanket that had long since turned gray. Her lips were cracked. “You… still alive?” Elios’s voice rasped. Vera moved a finger. “Unfortunately… yeah.” “Good.” “I was hoping you’d say ‘thank God’ or something.” Elios snorted. “I’m an atheist.” The fog shifted. The sun was nothing more than a pale shadow behind volcanic ash clouds. No direction. No birds. No wind. Just a dead sea. Vera licked her lips. “Water?” Elios lifted an empty plastic bottle and shook it. No sound. “Fuck,” Ver

The purple light was blinding, hot, and promised the end of all the pain crushing him.Elios shut his eyes tightly. He could feel the Chaos energy gathering in Lyra’s palm, his wife, his queen, and now his executioner. The power was ready to erase his existence down to the last atom.He was not afraid of dying.He was simply tired. Very tired.Sleep well, my love, Elios whispered silently to himself.But the death he had been waiting for never came.Another apocalypse arrived first.GGRRRRRRR-BOOOOOM!It was not the explosion from Lyra’s hand. The thunderous roar came from below, from the deepest belly of the earth. The sabotage Elios had planted in the main reactor twenty minutes earlier had finally reached its climax.The reactor core, stripped of its cooling system, did not merely melt down. It detonated violently, triggering a chain reaction that shattered the tectonic foundation beneath Facility Zero.The floor of the frozen crater split apart with a deafening crack.KRAAAK!The

Thick purple smoke shrouded the Ice Crater, swirling like a nebula storm in a vacuum.Lyra’s colossal body, which had filled the horizon moments ago, was shrinking at an unnatural speed. Flesh, bone, and muscle compressed inward with a series of wet, sickening cracks, the sound of biological matter being forcibly reshaped.Elios lost his footing. The giant’s back he had been standing on vanished beneath him.He fell.But he did not plunge into the abyss.The gravitational field around Lyra was still unstable from the removal of the Holy Iron Stake. Fragments of the platform, slabs of ice, and Elios himself floated in the air, suspended in weightless stasis.At the center of the vortex of dust and energy, a new figure took shape.No longer twenty meters tall. Now human in scale.A woman hovered before Elios.Her skin was pale gray, hard as marble yet smooth as silk.A pair of jet-black wings, now proportionate to her body, spread wide behind her, beating slowly to hold her position in

Thud. Landing on the back of a giant demon felt exactly like hitting asphalt coated in dry ice. Hard, freezing, and searing against the skin. Elios slammed onto Lyra’s left shoulder. His metal-plated hand grabbed whatever it could find, in this case a thick clump of black hair sprouting from the pale flesh of the Queen. “Ugh.” Vera landed beside him, skidding across the slick, mucus-slick surface of her skin. “Hold on, Vera! Don’t fall!” Elios shouted, catching Vera’s ankle with his still weakened left hand. Feeling parasites clinging to her body, Lyra roared in fury. She shook herself in violent spasms. It was like riding a wild horse during a magnitude nine earthquake. “GET… OFF… ME… LICE!” The Legion’s voice detonated inside their skulls, blurring Elios’s vision. “Sorry, honey! I’m not really in the mood for social distancing!” Elios shot back, his teeth rattling from the tremors. Above them, the three Church gunships that had been spewing lethal firepower suddenly ceased

Falling felt like being pulled back into the cold womb of the earth.There was no scream. The wind roared too violently in Elios’s ears, stealing his voice. Shards of glass and steel from the shattered observation balcony fell with him like an artificial meteor shower.Below, the darkness of the icy crater yawned open. At its center, Lyra’s colossal form glowed violet, waiting for her prey to fall within reach.Elios saw Vera three meters beneath him, her body spinning uncontrollably in midair.“Vera!” Elios screamed in his mind.His human left hand was useless. His right was metal.He did the only thing that metal hand could do.Mid-fall, Elios reached behind his belt and yanked free the portable grappling hook launcher he had taken from the corpse of a Paladin at the docks.He aimed. Not at the distant ice wall, but at one of the massive golden chains still restraining Lyra’s body, a chain stretching horizonta

A high pitched ringing filled Elios’s ears, drowning out the facility alarms still wailing in the distance.“…lios! Elios! Wake up!”The voice sounded as if it were coming from underwater. Hands were shaking his shoulder in panic.Elios’s eyes snapped open. He dragged in a sharp breath as if surfacing from the depths of the ocean. Cold air mixed with concrete dust stabbed into his lungs.The first thing he saw was Vera’s face.The female agent was kneeling beside him. White dust coated her features, dried blood clung to the corner of her mouth, and her right shoulder, where Elios had shot her, was wrapped in a hastily applied bandage already blooming red.“I’m… I’m still alive?” Elios croaked. He tried to sit up, but the world spun violently.“You were thrown five meters. Your head hit the wall. Mild concussion,” Vera reported, her voice trembling between relief and pain as she helped him upright. “If you had not woken u

The heat was absurd.The moment the train capsule's doors opened, a wave of scorching air slammed into Oliver's face like a concrete wall fresh out of a steel smelting furnace. The sweat that had just begun forming at his temples evaporated instantly. His lungs, still far from fully healed, felt as though they were being filled with boiling sand every time he took a breath."Holy hell..." Oliver cursed, squinting against the blinding glare. "What is this tower, a giant barbecue grill?"Before him rose the interior of Icarus Tower.The tower's lobby had no roof. At the center of the football-field-sized chamber was a massive vertical shaft that extended thousands of meters upward, leading directly toward the core of the Eternal Sun.White and golden light poured down from above, illuminating walls constructed from solar crystal and panels of pristine white porcelain.Elara stepped out of the capsule.She wore no shoes, and the smooth white soles of her feet immediately reddened upon to

The glass capsule shot through the darkness of the underground tunnel at a speed that made it feel like their stomachs had been left behind. The shrill whine of the magnetic rails, wuuuush, wuuuush, blended with the violent vibrations that slammed against the capsule walls every time they passed a rail junction.Beyond the glass, there was only absolute darkness.But inside Oliver's mind, he could still hear the screams of the townspeople in the square as they dissolved into ash, and the silent yet deadly footsteps of The Eraser.Oliver leaned back against the capsule's steel seat. His breathing was heavy, his chest rising and falling. His right hand, forged from golden data, flickered dimly, as though even his glitch energy had become afraid."We're safe for now," Oliver said, breaking the silence with a hoarse voice. He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. "That black janitor needs time to delete the cathedral's steel doors. He's fast, but he can't teleport."Oliv

The cold didn't seep in through the skin.It crawled straight through the spine, freezing the marrow before climbing upward and wrapping icy fingers around the base of the brain.Oliver, standing in the cathedral's basement, suddenly went rigid. His crystal cane scraped slightly across the stone floor, producing a harsh sound that sliced through the silence."You feel that?" Oliver asked, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper. His silver eyes widened as he stared blankly toward the exit.Elara, still sitting on the floor with her arms wrapped around her knees, tightened her grip. The blind girl's body trembled violently. The golden cloth covering her eyes was damp with tears, but now even her lips had gone pale."It's cold..." Elara whispered, her teeth chattering. "The Light above... I can feel it. The Light is afraid. Something is draining the warmth from this city."[WARNING: COSMIC ANOMALY DETECTED IN LOCAL ATMOSPHERE.][ENTITY: THE ERASER.]The red notification box on Oliver's

The basement beneath the Glass Cathedral smelled like hypocrisy gone stale. There were no windows. The walls were made of thick obsidian stone, patched together by Oliver using the Glitch Blade to make them immune to the nanobot signals drifting through the air. Overhead, a dome of blue static from a Localized Glitch Zone flickered softly, preventing any data transmission from leaving the room. This was the only Blind Spot in all of Aurelia. The only place where you could breathe without God watching. Oliver sat on a rusted wooden crate he had found in the corner. His black suit was pulled tight around him. The fingers of his right hand, made entirely of golden data, tapped against his thigh. Tap. Tap. Tap. Five people sat across from him. They weren't ordinary citizens. They were members of the Civitas Solis elite. A Judge of Light, two Cherubim Generals, a nobleman's wife, and at the far end... Elara, the Saintess, the one who had brought

Oliver's jaw felt like it was about to fall off. The muscles in his cheeks were cramping violently, pulling the corners of his mouth into a wide smile that left his teeth dry. If he dared lower the corners of his lips by even a millimeter, the blue sky above would instantly turn red, and an Angel Drone would descend to erase his existence. The most fucked-up world I've ever visited, Oliver cursed inwardly. The smile remained firmly plastered across his face. Pure hell wrapped in gift paper. Before him rose Civitas Solis, the capital of Aurelia. The city wasn't built from stone or concrete. Everything was made of glass, crystal, and white gold that reflected the eternal sunlight. The streets were immaculate, untouched by dust. There wasn't a single shadow in any corner. Light existed everywhere, stabbing directly into the retina. Oliver limped forward using his crystal-branch cane. His current appearance attracted attention no matter where he went. H

The escape felt more like dragging himself across broken glass. The moment the crowd of white-clad citizens wandered away, singing their cheerful hymns, Oliver immediately hauled himself out of the field of golden flowers. He couldn't afford to stay exposed. The black seawater he'd vomited up stood out far too clearly amid the pastel colors of this world. If another Angel Drone happened to patrol the area, he'd become an instant burn-in target. Oliver slipped into the forest bordering the field. But this was no ordinary forest. "Goddamn synthetic world," Oliver muttered under his breath, leaning his back against a tree trunk that felt hard and cold. The trees here were made of transparent crystal. Their leaves were thin sheets of glass reflecting the eternal sunlight, creating rainbow spectrums that made his eyes ache. There was no muddy earth beneath them, only spotless white marble pebbles. The forest had no dark shadows. Everything was brilliantly illuminate